Star Tribune
Former Plymouth Mayor Al Hilde, Jr. dies at 90
With nearly 80,000 residents and one of the largest business parks in the state, Plymouth is now the seventh largest city in Minnesota.
As mayor from 1968 to 1977, Al Hilde Jr., helped create the blueprint the west metro suburb followed as it rapidly transitioned from largely rural farmland into an prospering suburban community.
“He saw the need for a comprehensive plan,” said Jim Willis, who has been on the Plymouth City Council since the 1970s. From extending sewer and water lines to guiding land use, “everything was well planned and thought out. He personified the spirit of somebody who wanted to contribute to his community and make it a better place to live and raise a family.”
Hilde died July 28 at his home in Jackson, Wyo., where he moved in the mid-1980s to enjoy the mountains and his passions for flying and hunting. He was 90.
Hilde graduated from Logan High School in LaCrosse, Wis., where his name was added to the school’s Wall of Fame in 1988. He earned a degree in business administration from the University of Minnesota and spent two years in the U.S. Army stationed in Texas.
He started training to become a dental hygienist, but soon realized “that wasn’t going to be what he was doing,” said his son, Todd, of Austin, Texas. Instead, Hilde turned his interest to portable sanitation after learning about small toilets the Army was using in Long Beach, Calif. because it was too expensive to keep shuttling workers building ships back to the dock to use the bathroom.
With the idea of bringing dignity to outdoor sanitation, Hilde founded Satellite Industries in 1958 and built and marketed his first wooden portable toilets to Minneapolis contractors.
“Nobody knew what they were,” his son recalled. “We had to sell them on the value, and the value was productivity, not having your hourly workers jump in the car and go down to the gas station to go potty. And saving human dignity by not forcing people to go out in the woods.”
Hilde grew the Plymouth-based firm into one of the largest in the sanitation rental industry, with more than 15 models of portable restrooms and other products used in 130 countries. He was honored with the Minnesota Governor’s Award for “Outstanding Achievement in Community and Economic Development” in 1970.
Hilde was also a generous man, his son said. Music was a big part of his life, and yearly he brought the Minnesota Orchestra to Plymouth for an outdoor concert. When crowds got too big for the vacant lot where the orchestra played, Hilde donated $1 million for the Hilde Performance Center, an outdoor bandshell built adjacent to City Hall.
“It came from his desire to take high-quality music and bring it to the people,” Todd Hilde said. The performance art center and the Music in Plymouth series “is one of his legacies.”
Guided by his Christian faith and a strong work ethic, Hilde believed in work before play. He never shied away from tough tasks and made sure the job got done, those who knew him said.
“He had enormous integrity; he had it in spades,” Willis said. “He had a great deal of trust and relationships with the City Council, the town staff and the public he served.”
Besides his son, Todd, Al Hilde is survived by his wife of 70 years, Jayne, of Jackson, Wyo., sons Tim, of Vergas, Minn. and Bret of LaBelle, Fla., sisters Ann Ebbers, of Plymouth and Carol Stewart, of Tacoma Park, MD., and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Services have been held.
The Pentagon would not go into detail about how American trainers are helping Taiwan build defenses. But making clear to the Chinese that an amphibious assault would be fraught is part of the U.S. military’s deterrence plan.
Army officials also say they hope joint exercises with Pacific partners will show Chinese military officials all the capabilities that the United States has and can bring to bear.
The officials point out that more than a quarter of the service’s 450,000 active-duty troops are already tasked to the Pacific. But they define that region liberally, to encompass troops not only in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines but also in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and California. Taiwan is more than 6,000 miles from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, a separation the Army refers to as “the tyranny of distance.”
Docked in Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army vessel Maj. Gen. Robert Smalls will be critical to getting all the apparatuses of the Army into the Pacific theater. The 300-foot-long ship, which recently arrived from Norfolk, Virginia, via the Panama Canal for the exercises, can beach itself, discharging 900 tons of vehicles and cargo — and, if necessary, troops — onto islands.
Capt. Ander Thompson, the commander of the 7th Engineer Dive Detachment out of Pearl Harbor, was part of a detachment that spent several weeks this past summer with Filipino military divers clearing debris from a strategic port in the northern Philippine island of Batan, about 120 miles south of Taiwan.
The operation, which also deepened the harbor, will give Army and Navy ships better access to the port should conflict break out. Batan is near the Bashi Channel, a potential transit point for American forces headed to the Taiwan Strait.
For a handful of school board candidates across the state, the final weeks of campaigning have included an effort to lose support — or at least distance themselves ― from an organization known for backing conservative candidates and wading into local culture wars.
At least four candidates have stated publicly that they had not connected with or sought support from the Minnesota Parents Alliance before seeing their name appear on the group’s online voters guide. Some candidates said they were not aware of such an endorsement until voters reached out to them with questions about it.
“Without my knowledge or consent, I was added to the Minnesota Parents Alliance recommended candidate list,” Todd Haugen, a candidate for the Bemidji school board, wrote on his campaign’s Facebook page. “I did not seek this endorsement, and I have now requested more than once to be taken off of the list.”
The Minnesota Parents Alliance bills its voters guide as a nonpartisan resource, though the group lists several conservative groups, including the think tank Center of the American Experiment, on its list of resources for candidates.
The organization’s executive director, Cristine Trooien, said the voter guide recommendations are based on an independent evaluation of candidates’ campaigns, public engagement, and input received from parents and community members. Trooien launched the group in 2022 as a response to equity efforts in schools. Its initial goal included recruiting and supporting school board candidates who would champion ‘parents’ rights’ in education.
The group, and several others like it — on both sides of the political spectrum — cropped up during the pandemic, when tensions flared in school board rooms across the country as parents fought over mask mandates, curriculum and policies involving gender and race. Increasingly, school board races are drawing more money than ever — largely a result of outside groups lobbying amid those ongoing culture wars.
In general, endorsements aren’t new to school board races. Political parties, teachers unions and other educational organizations have long declared their support for candidates that align with their missions.
Minnesota Parents Alliance, Trooien said, does not coordinate its voter guide recommendations with candidates or require them to pledge their allegiance to the organization. She sees that as the antidote to what she called a “quid pro quo endorsement process” by teachers unions and interest groups, which offer support in “exchange for prioritizing that organization’s agenda at the board table,” she said.
Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine was arrested in New York City on Tuesday for alleged parole violations that were set when he was sentenced several years ago to two years in prison in a racketeering case.
Read the original article
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings